I believe the proper sequence is cartoon, action figure, video game, breakfast cereal. Then a live action/CGI movie featuring Megan Fox.
Beyond that, the only option is “bilious self-parody.” I recommend getting off the train somewhere after “action figure.”

For those wondering, this looks as if it was done in the Pony Creator, which is the brainchild of a poster on DeviantArt. I don’t have the account name before me at present, (nor can I presently access it – maybe when I get home if anyone cares) but a search for ‘Pony Creator’ on DA should get you to it.

You know, those fundies who refused to allow their kids to have any My Little Pony dolls because doing so could allow demons to come into the house might have been thinking something like this could happen some day. Maybe.

What? I saw the title and first few lines of the post, and, having just got back from Skepticon, thought I would spend a few minutes trying to guess the ponies. I couldn’t remember anyone at Skepticon with a moustache though. So I finally checked the caption: PZ? My afternoon has been ruined, and I expect a full refund.

Unfortunately. See, magic is standard for 1/3rd of the ponies, but then there’s this one non-magic pony who can apparently predict the (very short term) future. So the magical science-loving pony goes out to investigate, and in conclusion she can’t find an explanation, gives up, and just accepts that something is weird. Apparently the moral of the story was meant to be ‘open-mindedness is good’, but it then got twisted into ‘blind faith is good’.

The episode’s writing isn’t very good, so I’m glad that the writer for it has only done one other episode. And, it’s only one bad episode out of the 33 currently out (with more coming out every week at the moment). If you just ignore that one episode, or even ignore its last 5 minutes, it’s perfectly fine because the weird foresight concept is never mentioned again, ever. It’s a totally worthwhile, high quality, feminist cartoon in general, and I just like to pretend that one episode doesn’t exist.

Alisa @#56: I took away the moral of “if you can’t explain it, it’s not unreal, it’s just not explained yet”. Maybe it’s just me.

Anyway, my roommate and I had a discussion on the way home. It goes like this:
1. MLP:FiM is a show.
2. In this show, talking ponies exist.
3. These talking ponies live in a world with things like magic, dragons, and living goddesses.
4. Twilight Sparkle is the most likely pony to be a skeptic, considering she’s shown skeptical tendencies.
a. She is a unicorn, and can use magic.
b. Her teacher is one of the aforementioned living goddesses.

Gravity @#59: There’s a new series, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It’s become popular among the 20-something crowd since it’s well-written and made so parents can watch it without wanting to shrivel up and blow away.

And if you think the Dorf Fortress mods are bad, don’t look up the TF2 stuff.

Lauren Faust has admitted that they messed up the moral in Feeling Pinkie Keen and that it should have been more on the lines of “sometimes you can’t explain things.”

As for the show in general it gets thumbs up for a number of reasons, two for me in particular:

Of the mane six characters, two are hard-core introverts and this is not treated as there being something wrong with them. Sure, they do have issues that stem from their introversion, but strongy extroverted characters also have issues[1].

The central character is one of those introverts, a serious bookworm[2] and the brain of the group. Even though one of the themes of the show is her needing to break out of her shell and make friends, this is not done at the cost of her having to dumb herself down and/or act ‘normal’. In fact her intelligence is regularly celebrated and her reading is sometimes the answer to problems.[3]

[1] Such as a mouth that writes cheques her horn can’t cash.[4]

[2] She lives in a library.[5]

[3] Just how would you defeat an ursa major?

[4] OK, there was no reason to assume that an ursa major just happened to live within an easy walk of the small town she was performing in, but still.

Cross-posted from Blag Hag. I’m one of the World’s Biggest Fans Evah of General Zoi, the creator of the pony generator. She’s a verrrry clever lady – she used to design and animate custom Sims objects, something for which you need a hell of a lot of grey matter and patience (EA hates customisers with a passion and makes it as awkward as possible). I released an involuntary ‘squeee!’ when I saw the name, and went to the site to confirm that it was her. It was!